Three AM
by SirCarter
Summary: "A feminine figure was framed in a rectangle of light, bent over with her head in the refrigerator. Rachel cleared her throat, and the figure jumped sharply, crashing her head into a shelf." Faberry. Side Quinntana and Brody/Rachel.


Rachel was exhausted.

She trudged up the stairs to her apartment, heels in hand, praising the sweet victory of a Friday afternoon. Her workload at NYADA had caught up with her in the weeks after Valentine's Day, and she wanted nothing more than to fall asleep until morning. With Brody off on an audition, and Kurt with the Adam's Apples, the only obstacle in her way was a certain loud-mouthed Latina.

Rachel leaned her forehead on the door as she dug through her purse for her keys. Just as she turned the lock, a loud moan reverberated through the walls. _You have got to be kidding me._ Rachel stomped through the threshold, slamming the door behind her, and glared at the source of the noise.

Another moan echoed out from under the far bedroom door, followed by a gravelly, "Fuck, Santana!" Rachel rolled her eyes and walked across the space to her own room, dropping her heels as she went. A fallen zipper left her dress on the floor, and she fished a pair of earplugs out of her nightstand. It only took moments for the drained singer to roll over and pass out.

When Rachel woke, the clock blinked a very bleary 2:47am. Brody was breathing softly beside her. A growling stomach forced the brunette from her bed, her hands finding a pair of sweats and one of Brody's shirts.

Rachel padded into the kitchen. A feminine figure was framed in a rectangle of light, bent over with her head in the refrigerator. Rachel cleared her throat, and the figure jumped sharply, crashing her head into a shelf. Rachel gasped and rushed over to her victim. The woman backed up, hand to her head, and the refrigerator door closed, cloaking the room in darkness. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to scare you!" She placed a hand on the woman's robed shoulder. "Are you okay?"

A familiar, husky voice replied to the brunette. "You really shouldn't do that to people, Rach." A door opened somewhere in the apartment before Rachel could ask how the woman knew her name. "What the hell was that, Q?" Santana's voice called out softly.

"Q?" Rachel repeated. The voice ignored her. "Nothing, Santana, Rachel just startled me. I'm fine." Rachel reached blindly for the wall and slammed her hand into the light switch. The sharp blaze momentarily blinded the three girls, but Rachel was sure she had suffered permanent retina damage.

Quinn Fabray was standing in the kitchen, clothed in Santana's bathrobe, rubbing the back of her head; Santana stood behind her in the doorway in nothing but a bed sheet. Rachel stared at a pattern of fresh purple bruises on Quinn's exposed collar bone and neck, barely able to comprehend what it all meant. The blonde's cheeks reddened when she realized what had grabbed Rachel's attention, but Santana smirked with amusement. "Right, I'm going back to bed." An awkward reigned as she disappeared into the darkness of the living room.

"Hello, Quinn," Rachel managed to say. "What brings you to New York on a Friday night?" Quinn blinked at her. "I got here this morning, actually. Santana mentioned you've been pretty stressed out lately, I thought you could use a day off."

Rachel raised her eyebrow. "You came here to see me? After visiting me once this entire year?"

"Well, yes. Only…"

"…only I wasn't here today."

"No. You weren't."

"But Santana was."

"Rachel. That's not what-"

Rachel walked past the blonde and opened the fridge again. "I just came out for a bit of food," she said levelly. "I'll let you get back to your girlfriend. Come to think of it, Santana failed to mention you two were dating."

"We're not. She's not," Quinn said. "We're just having some fun. I'm not gay."

"So you've told me." Rachel shut the fridge with more force than necessary, her appetite gone. She glanced up at the woman behind her and felt her breath catch in her throat. Quinn's mused hair, _sex hair_, she thought, curled around her delicate jaw, and her hazel eyes were locked on Rachel's own. It occurred to Rachel that Quinn probably wasn't wearing any clothes under Santana's robe, and she swallowed thickly. "How long have you and Santana been…_having fun?"_

Quinn tilted her head and said, "Valentine's Day." Rachel briefly remembered seeing them stumble into an elevator at Mr. Shues's reception; she and Finn had taken the one after them. "I see." Quinn took a step towards her, but Rachel stiffened. "When did you decide you wanted to have fun with Santana?" Quinn glanced down. "Rachel, I don't-"

"Quinn. When?"

The blonde met her eyes. "Thanksgiving." Rachel forced her white knuckles to release the fridge door. "Though I've always been attracted to her; I just refused to acknowledge it. Hindsight is always 20/20, right?" When her timid smile was not returned, the careful expression on her face dropped.

Rachel looked away. The smoke in Quinn's eyes had cleared, replaced with the familiar HBIC gaze that never failed to raise the hairs on the back of her neck. She shuffled over to the sink, aware of the eyes following her. "Santana is a very sensual woman. I think most people who come across her feel some level of attraction, though her honesty, as she calls it, can be rather off putting." Rachel stared at the faucet, vaguely aware that she didn't have a glass to fill, when movement caught her eye. Quinn's distorted reflection approached in the window above the sink. "Are you attracted to Santana?"

Their eyes locked in the window. Rachel listened to the blood rushing to her head for a beat. She sighed. "Quinn, I am not immune to beautiful women." It took all of the starlet's talent to keep her voice steady. "You know that." The reflection looked away, but Rachel spun to face her demon.

"Did you lie to me, Quinn?"

Hazel met chocolate in an instant. Rachel ignored the other woman's discomfort, repeating her question. "Did you lie?" To her chagrin, Rachel's voice cracked around the last syllable. Quinn's wooden face matched the voice that came out. "I don't know what you're referring to."

"Bullshit." Quinn rocked back on her heels, and Rachel pressed her advantage. "Junior year, I asked you if you felt what I felt. You said no, that you had no idea what I was talking about, you weren't into girls, you would forget I ever said anything. Did. You. Lie. To. Me." Fire dripped from the words, the brunette standing straight, watching the frozen woman in defiance. Quinn's eyes threw daggers, but Rachel refused to back down. The tension crackled off her skin until Quinn couldn't take the silence anymore.

"Yes. I lied. What does it matter, Rachel? I've been lying to you since the day we met!" Quinn allowed herself a moment of pride at the astonishment on Rachel's face before she realized what had just come out of her mouth.

"What do you mean, 'since the day we met'?" Rachel didn't know what she was looking for when she started down this road, but this definitely wasn't it. Quinn looked equally stunned, and it was in a halting voice that she said, "That's how long I've felt it, Rachel. On the first day of freshman year, you opened the locker next to mine and stuck a gold star to the door. That was it." Quinn couldn't help but notice how adorable the small woman looked when she was confused. "From that moment on, I made a point to stop by my locker as often as I could. I memorized your schedule so I could pass you in the halls. I sat behind you in English so I could stare at you without you noticing."

"I did," Rachel interjected in a daze. "Notice you staring." Quinn's mouth twisted in a smile, but she forced herself on. "I think I started to fall in love with you the first time I heard you sing. You were all alone on the stage, playing the piano, singing the most beautiful song I had ever heard. When I got home, I looked up the lyrics. It was Vienna by Billy Joel." Quinn nodded at Rachel's sudden intake of breath. "You were so surprised when you saw it on my most played list. I never told you why, so here's your answer, two years late."

Quinn paused, eyes searching the woman in front of her, but Rachel seemed to have lost all responsive ability. The silence stretched, with Rachel doing her best impression of a statue and Quinn trying to regain feeling in her limbs. Eventually, the blonde's nerves forced her back into speech.

"I wanted to tell you. Please trust me when I say I never wanted anything more in my life than to tell you I loved you back." Rachel had begun to tremble, her head bent to the floor, hands clutching the counter behind her. Quinn snapped her mouth shut, concern on her face. "Why, Quinn?" The woman in question was at a loss for words.

"I showed you my heart. You told me you didn't want it. Now you're telling me that you were in love with me all along? Why would you do that?" Quinn forced herself to take the rage of Rachel Berry without stepping back, but the hellfire was terrifying. "Explain that to me, Quinn. Why didn't you give us a chance?" Quinn swallowed audibly. She had come this far. She wasn't going to stay silent anymore.

"I didn't want to hold you back. I told you that you didn't belong in Lima, and you don't. When you came to me with your heart in your hands, I wanted so badly to hold it. You had taken mine so long ago." She wiped her eyes. "I thought I was doomed to live in Ohio forever. I was in a very black hole, Rach, and I didn't see a way out. I couldn't let myself drag you down into it. I couldn't do that."

Quinn's cheeks were wet by this point, but Rachel was still flushed with anger. She jabbed a finger at the blonde's chest. "That wasn't your call to make, Quinn. We could have discussed it, and I would have told you how amazing you are, that you are destined for incredible things, and we could conquer the world together. You should have given me a chance!"

"I'm sorry, okay! You don't know how much it hurt for me to let you go! I'd been head over heels for you for years, and when you finally started to feel the same way, I couldn't let myself be happy, not if it meant taking yours! It sent me into a spiral, one _you _had to rescue me from. But I can't let myself regret it." Quinn dropped her head to her hand. "I can't let myself think 'what if.' I can't. I won't."

Rachel's silence brought Quinn's head back up, and fresh tears filled her eyes at the tender expression on the brunette's face. "Quinn…" Rachel had no idea what to say. She had always known Quinn was riddled with cracks and fractures, but she never knew she was the cause of so many. The knowledge hurt. Knowing she still couldn't fix them was almost unbearable. "I had planned to tell you once," Quinn said. Her words dripped with exhaustion. "When I got my acceptance letter to Yale. I went to school that day ready to tell you. Determined to tell you."

Rachel couldn't stop herself from reaching out for Quinn's hand. "Why didn't you?" The hand was sweaty, but Rachel didn't mind. She watched Quinn's shoulders shake with a thin laugh. "Finn proposed before I got the chance." Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, and opened them again. Quinn dropped her hand and walked across the kitchen. When she faced the brunette, her eyes had dried.

"When you left for New York, I made the decision to try and move on from you. I didn't take the train, ignored you on Skype, avoided your phone calls…e-mail was only connection I allowed myself, because I could put distance into them." Rachel frowned. "I thought it worked. I finally noticed Santana, at any rate. So when Kurt called me in a panic, begging me to talk some sense into you, I called Santana in too. I was able to focus on her when I felt myself falling for you again." Quinn shook her head. "It's fun with her, Rachel, but I don't love her, and she doesn't love me. I guess I'm trying to figure out if I like girls in general, or if you were the exception."

"Well, I am exceptional." Rachel clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Quinn, however, erupted in contagious laughter, mostly fueled by the tension in the room. When they managed to quiet themselves, the air around them had relaxed for the first time since Rachel turned on the light. Rachel stepped closer to Quinn. "Thank you for telling me, Quinn." Hazel eyes alighted on her face. "I am sorry, Rach, for lying to you." The brunette nodded. "Can you forgive me?" In response, Rachel wrapped the blonde in a hug.

Quinn melted into the embrace, dropping her cheek onto the shorter woman's head. Rachel sighed. It was a few moments before Rachel managed to pull away. When they separated, both had more than a little moisture their eyes.

"Rachel?" The deep voice appeared in the doorway, seemingly still asleep, and obviously confused as to where his girlfriend had gone at 3:30 in the morning. Rachel smiled at him. "Go back to bed. I'll be there in a minute." Brody ambled back down the hall with a sleepy nod, and Rachel turned back to a faintly pink Quinn.

"I'm pretty exhausted," Quinn murmured to the floor. "Okay," Rachel said softly. "Are you going to be here in the morning?" Quinn nodded and sent her a tight smile. "Quinn…" The blonde glanced at Rachel's ear, and Rachel let her voice fade. She felt caught off guard by Quinn's change in demeanor, but there had been enough rawness for one night. She simply said, "I'll see you at breakfast" and started to leave after Brody.

"Rach…" The brunette turned. Quinn bit her lip, simply gazing at the woman in front of her. Eventually, she simply shook her head and twitched her mouth into a smile. Rachel smiled back, and turned out the door. As she stepped down the hall, she heard it. Quinn's final confession of the night. The faint voice not meant for her to hear, yet loud as sirens in her ears.

"I'm still in love with you."


End file.
